Tag Archives | New York City

I’m not entirely sure that the New York City Council has the power to defy federal law, but in any event it has declared New York City a TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Free Zone in protest against the controversial trade deal that President Obama is pushing so hard for. Here’s the announcement via Communications Workers of America:

On the heels of Mayor Bill de Blasio criticizing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as a “raw deal” and “huge mistake,” the New York City Council voted unanimously to pass a resolution declaring the city a “TPP-free zone” and urging Congress to reject “Fast Track” legislation for the trade deal.

The TPP, a massive trade agreement covering the U.S. and 11 Pacific Rim nations, is a giant corporate power grab that has been negotiated in secrecy for five years. Executives of the country’s biggest corporations and their lobbyists already have read the text and have had significant opportunities to shape the terms of this deal.

What do you think disinfonauts, is an ad campaign on New York City buses with the slogan ‘Killing Jews is Worship’ kosher? The NY Daily News has the story:

A conservative firebrand said Tuesday she plans to paper at least 50 MTA buses with Islamophobic posters following a judge’s ruling the ads were protected by the First Amendment.

Pamela Geller’s controversial poster.

Manhattan Federal Court Judge John Koeltl wrote the MTA had improperly denied displaying Pamela Geller’s controversial posters featuring a picture of a menacing man with his face masked in a Middle Eastern scarf next to the quote, “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah.” The quote was attributed to “Hamas MTV” and included the tagline, “That’s His Jihad. What’s yours?”

Though the MTA had accepted other incendiary posters by Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative, it declined last year to post the “Killing Jews” ad, saying it could provoke violence.

Weight isn’t important the way the magazines make you think it is. I know a girl who just looks at her face in the medicine cabinet mirror and never looks below her shoulders, and she’s four or five hundred pounds but she doesn’t see all that, she just sees a beautiful face and therefore she thinks she’s a beauty. And therefore I think she’s a beauty, too, because I usually accept people on the basis of their self-images, because their self-images have more to do with the way they think than their objective-images do. Maybe she’s six hundred pounds, who knows. If she doesn’t care, I don’t.

But if you do watch your weight, try the Andy Warhol New York City Diet: when I order in a restaurant, I order everything that I don’t want, so I have a lot to play around with while everyone else eats.

So if “[a]lmost half of the DNA found on the [New York City Subway] system’s surfaces did not match any known organism and just 0.2 percent matched the human genome,” then where does it come from? Anyone? From the New York Times:

Have you ever been on the subway and seen something that you did not quite recognize, something mysteriously unidentifiable?

Well, there is a good chance scientists do not know what it is either.

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College released a study on Thursday that mapped DNA found in New York’s subway system — a crowded, largely subterranean behemoth that carries 5.5 million riders on an average weekday, and is filled with hundreds of species of bacteria (mostly harmless), the occasional spot of bubonic plague, and a universe of enigmas. Almost half of the DNA found on the system’s surfaces did not match any known organism and just 0.2 percent matched the human genome.

Jimmy McMillan, the politician who became a meme for his stance of “The rent is too damn high,” just got evicted from his New York apartment. But it wasn’t, according to Jimmy, because the rent was too high, but rather because it was too damn low. Jimmy, who lived in an apartment that charged $872 a month(!), claims his landlord evicted him because he wants to do away with rent-controlled properties and charge more. The landlord claims it’s because Jimmy’s primary residence is located elsewhere, which breaks the terms of the rental agreement…

The funeral of Officer Ramos on Saturday, Dec. 27, turned into a Fascist spectacle as many in the ranks of the police turned their backs on NYC Mayor de Blasio—a Fascist spectacle because, already heavily militarized, already implicated in wanton killings of blacks nationwide, the police, many coming from far and wide, used the funeral to demonstrate their demand for acting with impunity and their contempt for authority to reign them in. The funeral symbolized the police as enemies of the rule of law, unable and unwilling to bear scrutiny for lawless acts of an ongoing nature but brought to national attention through a sudden condensation of events over the last several weeks. We stand in fear of our own public servants, just as we do toward the CIA on the international plane, a militarization of American life which internalizes, collectively, the repression America as a nation presents to and imposes on the world and internally demands of itself lest its global/domestic Power be questioned.

Residents of a New York City neighborhood can count a cult among their many neighbors, according to a report.

The Congregation for the Light calls Manhattan’s Murray Hill area home and preaches the impending end of days and the power of karmic retribution to men and women who believe they descend from an Aryan super race that once populated Atlantis, reports the New York Post.

With all the hallmarks of a cult, it’s no surprise ‘the Light,’ as its 200 members call it, also has some disenchanted former members spreading tales of its sinister side.

Former member Paul Arthur Miller described to the Post a young adulthood full of indentured servitude in leader Tom Baer’s furniture factory, physical training for a doomsday that never seemed to come and a culture of homophobia.

‘The belief is that Planet Earth will be ending soon and we would have to defend our people and safeguard our food and supplies,’ 58-year-old Miller recalled to the Post.

Soon police may instantly know the identity and personal background of everyone they see, VentureBeat reports:

Google Glass may soon become a favored tool for law enforcement agencies in the United States.

The New York City Police Department’s massive and controversial intelligence and analytics unit is evaluating whether Google Glass is a decent fit for investigating terrorists and helping cops lock up bad guys, VentureBeat has learned.

The department recently received several pairs of the modernist-looking specs to test out. “We’re trying them out, mostly for patrol purposes,” a ranking New York City law enforcement official told VentureBeat. Wireless facial recognition software is one potential use.

The glasses are currently only available through Google’s Glass Explorer program, in which people who interested in acquiring them first apply and then receive notification from Google on whether it accepts or denies their application. Respondents who get the green light must pay $1,500 for the privilege.

Would you be brave enough to dabble in New York City electorial politics? Via the New York Post:

A rival of Melissa Mark-Viverito filed a million-dollar lawsuit against the front-runner for City Council speaker — claiming she put a Caribbean hex on her while the two were running for the same council seat, in the form of a black-magic mural on her apartment building.

Gwen Goodwin, 52, who spectacularly lost the Democratic primary to Mark-Viverito in September, says her nemesis targeted her East 100th Street building as the canvas for a five-story image of a bodiless rooster atop wooden poles. Mark-Viverito was the head of an urban-art campaign launched last summer called Los Muros Hablan (“the walls speak”).

“I don’t believe [in the Occult], but strange things were happening,” Goodwin claimed. She said that she suddenly got a blood clot in her foot and that a close friend began “acting crazy” right after the mural went up.